1/48 Hasegawa Arado 234-Completed Build-Page 12

Thanks fellas!

I broke out the pin vise to restore all of the rivet detail that got sanded away at the front part of the fuselage. I've still got the section behind and on the sides of the fuselage at the wing root to go and that's not to mention re-applying the panel lines that are gone as well. Here's 45 minutes worth of sanding and re-riveting:

Thank you all for the encouragement on this bad boy. It's much appreciated .....especially when I have times at the bench like I've had for the last couple of days. I mean.........I pulled this next stunt off but it was a bit frustrating to me.

I finally opened up the Aires engine set because I'm at that point to where I want to work on the engine mounting for the starboard engine as that's the one I'll be displaying opened up. I was just getting over all the goodies in the kit (these engines look fabulous BTW) when I turned my attention to the instructions of how these beauties mount up to the wing. At first I wanted to put everything back in the box and move on.

You guys know about where I'm at with the build right now so you can imagine how I felt when I saw this in the instructions:

Yeah. That's what I said too.

I did, however , think about it over a cup of coffee and came up with this plan:

I took this

and cut the locating pins off of the base and sanded the back side down until I was left with the center strip and the offset mounting hole, made all the cuts and holes in the wing like I was supposed to and inserted everything into the openings and holes in the wing from the outside.

The results? Something I think I can live with:

Ok.....made it past that hump! Movin' right along now.................................

Dec 2, 2016 20:40:16 GMT -7 Big D said:

Dec 2, 2016 20:24:13 GMT -7 mustang1989 said:

Thanks Dennis. Hopefully I'll get through this and my two VW builds with my sanity still intact. 84

If you're a model builder you never were sane to start with, especially if you try to be good at it.

Dennis: Yes sir..............I do believe that your are right.

Ken: Aside from the cockpit/ nose , I'll betcha this kit could be put together fairly soundly in one day. There's just really nothing to it. Thanks for the encouragement Ken.

Up to this point its been a lot of body work but I think we're getting into the "meat and potatoes" of the build now. I was going to go for primer stage this week but it's been raining and cool out so I'll wait until fairer weather hits us. That'll take us to the engine build up stage. Folks I just can't express enough how much I enjoy building up resin engines from Aires. I mean you've gotta watch 'em and plan out the build around 'em as some times they'll throw a "curve ball" at you in regards to fit but you just can't beat them for the "wow factor" as a builder as they pack a punch in terms of detail.

 I started with the base engine assy which consists of three main parts shown here:

and all build up nicely to form the base engine ( like I said...........a ton of detail):

I black based all three parts separately and shot the compressor section and ignitor sections with Testors Aluminum enamel but it was waaaay too grainy for my tastes. So I was in search of a more smooth and true aluminum look without it having that automotive aluminum intake manifold texture to it. What I found next was by pure (and a lot of us run into this in modeling) accident. My wife is a mosaic artist and uses all kinds of paints and things of that nature in her "builds". She was working with some letter decorations last night and was showing off this neat acrylic silver paint that she had and once I saw it there was a "ding" .

So I used her silver paint over the enamel that I had already sprayed on and after that had dried I used some Mig Dark Wash (which folks, I haven't found  a better wash out there yet for coverage and bringing the most out of details) and the results were mind blowing to me:

Here are the materials:

and here are the results on my Junkers Jumo 004 engine. I've still got a lot of detail work and detail painting to do but THIS.........is gonna WORK.